Aspects of the present disclosure relate generally to wireless communication systems, and more particularly, to method and apparatus for maintaining reachability of a user equipment in an idle state.
Wireless communication networks are widely deployed to provide various communication services such as telephony, video, data, messaging, broadcasts, and so on. Such networks, which are usually multiple access networks, support communications for multiple users by sharing the available network resources. One example of such a network is the UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN). The UTRAN is the radio access network (RAN) defined as a part of the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), a third generation (3G) mobile phone technology supported by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). The UMTS, which is the successor to Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) technologies, currently supports various air interface standards, such as Wideband-Code Division Multiple Access (W-CDMA), Time Division-Code Division Multiple Access (TD-CDMA), and Time Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TD-SCDMA). The UMTS also supports enhanced 3G data communications protocols, such as High Speed Packet Access (HSPA), which provides higher data transfer speeds and capacity to associated UMTS networks.
In a wireless communication system, a user equipment (UE) may be in communication with a peer entity to support communications between one or more applications installed on the UE and one or more applications installed on the peer entity. In an aspect, tracking the reachability status of the UE in the wireless communication system may play an important role in maintaining communication between the application on UE and the application on the peer entity. If the application of the peer entity sends a reachability status inquiry to the UE while the UE is in an idle state, the UE may transition out of the idle state and into a connected state in order to respond to the reachability status inquiry. The UE may then transition back to the idle state. As a result of the constant transitioning that may occur between connected and idle states due to reachability status inquiries, the UE may experience increased signaling overhead and power consumption. As such, applications on peer entities that require a high frequency of reachability status updates, thereby constantly interrupting the UE's idle operations, may adversely impact the UE performance. Thus, improvements in maintaining reachability of a UE that is in an idle state are desired.